Wall Dampens Christmas Spirit in Bethlehem

A towering wall of gray concrete slabs cuts across what was once the main road connecting Bethlehem and Jerusalem. Just inside the barrier, past a spanking new Israeli security terminal, a once-bustling neighborhood has become a ghost town.

Shops are shuttered or empty, and the streets deserted. A sign carries the name of an abandoned restaurant. “Memories,” it says. Another sign near an empty shell says, “Border Cafeteria.”

With the 30-foot barrier separating Bethlehem from Jerusalem completed, the town revered by Christians as the birthplace of Jesus is preparing to celebrate Christmas behind a wall.

Israel says the wall is meant to keep out suicide bombers, but inside Bethlehem the view is different.

“It is turning the city into a big prison for its citizens,” said Mayor Victor Batarseh. “The whole area [near the wall] is like a ghetto.”

In a Christmas message, Batarseh urged tourists to come to Bethlehem “by the hundreds and thousands to morally break down the racist wall and checkpoints” maintained by the Israelis around the city.

Bethlehem has been a flash point during the current five-year conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. Israeli forces besieged militants holed up in the Church of the Nativity during an incursion in 2002, and gunmen and protesters often clashed with Israeli troops guarding the Jewish shrine of Rachel’s Tomb on the northern outskirts of town.

The Israelis have encased the domed tomb, venerated as the burial place of the biblical matriarch Rachel, in a fortified compound, protected by concrete barriers that divide the main street into town and hem in adjacent Palestinian homes. Jewish worshipers are ferried in by armored bus.

It is less than a 10-minute drive from Bethlehem to Jerusalem, but to make the trip, Palestinians have to get special Israeli permits allowing them to leave the West Bank. Israel says it will facilitate Christmas visits to Bethlehem by local and foreign pilgrims and will allow tourist buses free access and ensure speedy security checks on the way out.

A new Israeli terminal in the wall is the latest focus of controversy.

Israeli officials say the facility, where tourists and local travelers are subjected to security and identity checks, is meant to smooth movement. But Palestinian officials say the terminal has caused delays and is an attempt to create a de facto border crossing, separating the Arab areas of Jerusalem from Bethlehem and the rest of the West Bank.

Yet away from the walled-off outskirts of town, this holiday season in Bethlehem is less grim than recent Christmases.

Since the declaration of a cease-fire in February, violence has dropped sharply, tourism is on the rise and hotel occupancy is showing modest improvement. New decorations are strung over the streets leading to Manger Square and the Church of the Nativity, built over the grotto where Jesus is believed to have been born.

Hotels damaged in the fighting have been refurbished and reopened, most notably the graceful Jacir Palace InterContinental, whose rooms were commandeered in 2001 by Israeli troops fighting gunmen in the area. Now a Christmas tree greets visitors in the lobby, a fountain gurgles in a courtyard restaurant and the hotel is offering special holiday rates in an attempt to revive business.

Figures kept by the Bethlehem Municipality show a rebound in tourism. In 2002, during the height of the fighting, only an estimated 15,000 people visited the town, a sharp drop from the millennium year of 2000, when about 857,000 tourists arrived here. But the numbers have climbed steadily since, reaching 100,000 in 2004 and 252,000 so far this year.

About 30,000 visitors are expected this Christmas compared to 18,000 who came last year.

Yet the Jacir Palace, like other hotels, is still mostly empty, a sign of the lingering economic malaise left by the violence. Tourism was the mainstay of the local economy, and travel restrictions imposed by Israel after Palestinian attacks have denied Arab workers access to jobs in Jerusalem and in Israel. Unemployment levels have reached 60%, the mayor said.

The deteriorating economy has led to a steady exodus of Bethlehem’s Christian residents, once a majority and now estimated at 35% of the total population of 30,000. Palestinian Christians, many with relatives abroad and greater economic resources, have emigrated at a more rapid rate than Muslims.

At his variety store where he sells Christmas decorations, Victor Hosh, 40, said that few shoppers had stopped in despite the approaching holiday.

“People have no money to spend, and at most they buy something cheap and simple,” he said.

At the Green Land garden supply shop, Marwan Najjar, 50, said business was down to a fraction of what it once was. Before the outbreak of the Palestinian uprising in 2000, the main road into Bethlehem was a busy thoroughfare, with many visitors from Jerusalem, both Palestinian and Israeli, who would shop at the local stores.

Now Green Land is sandwiched between the Israeli barrier and army outposts around Rachel’s Tomb; it is the only shop left open on a road that is blocked and deserted.

“Nobody can come from Jerusalem, and people in Bethlehem are afraid to reach this area,” Najjar said. “Israeli troops pass from here, and sometimes they stop people.”

Mahmoud Nustas, 32, who lives nearby, can only get to his house by a narrow paved path near a wall of concrete separating his home from Rachel’s Tomb.

Nustas said that the Israeli barrier looping into the outskirts of Bethlehem was “an attempt to demarcate a border,” not a security measure.

But Shlomo Dror, a spokesman for the Israeli Defense Ministry department that is responsible for the West Bank, said that the wall was a necessary evil brought about by bombings and other Palestinian attacks in Israel.

“It is not pleasant to look at that wall, but on the other hand it saves lives,” Dror says. “If the choice is between quality of life and saving lives, saving lives comes first.”